Hell is a bad place to be

His hair is black and tangled under his ball cap. The name Rusty is stitched into his jacket in gold thread, but I doubt that’s his name. He picks at the ground with blackened fingernails near a knot of drug dealers, hoping to assemble enough crack cocaine to get a hit.

He looks up at me for a second with watery, desperate eyes. Our meeting is like an electric shock. A raw nerve. He turns back to the ground, scratching the concrete with his fingers.

A few strides away, the alley is teeming with people heating the ends of their crack pipes.

It is midday and the traffic of customers is continuous for the drug dealers. After a quick huddle on the sidewalk, the deal is done. The addicts hurry to the alley to find a doorway or a dumpster to use as cover — from the wind mostly, no one cares if the police are watching — for a few deep hits from the pipe and a few minutes of relief from a bone-gnawing craving.

As I walk up the alley, the faces that emerge from the smoke are ghostly white and emaciated, like skulls. Their stares are as vacant as the storefronts that line Hastings between Main and Carrall.

City workers in orange vests walk the alleys and streets of what the city calls Area A, often under the gaze of police officers. The four blocks bordering the intersection of East Hastings and Columbia Streets form the core of the Downtown Eastside, the epicentre of hell.

In fact, the locals here greet outsiders with a cheerful, “Welcome to hell.”

A group of street cleaners passes, heading north on Columbia. The street and sidewalks behind them are tidy. Their shovels and bins are full of cigarette wrappers, chip bags and snack cake boxes. The street ahead of them is still strewn with trash. The snow beside the garbage can on the corner is black. The bin itself is empty but there is trash lying all around it.

The doorways of abandoned storefronts are sprayed with blood and littered with discarded syringes. Above the Radio Station Cafe are several storeys of apartments with window boxes mounted up the side of the building. The marigolds are doing their best, but it isn’t enough. They look very lonely.

The boarded-up windows and doors are a magnet for graffiti. There are names and the usual assortment of bad language and even some drawings. I am impressed by the intricate rendering of two syringes crossed like the bones on a pirate flag. The messages, political and personal, are gibberish.

As if to light a candle rather than curse the darkness, the City of Vancouver has posted a letter-sized piece of paper in one doorway at 112 East Hastings St. with a bold red stamp reading “Legal Notice.” The order requires the removal of graffiti, though there is none apparent. Every other building in the area is covered with scrawl, but not this one.

A man with long, nicotine-stained grey hair walks out the front door of the Regent Hotel and kicks at the discarded cups and newspapers on the sidewalk, then goes back inside. Outside The Only Sea Foods, a woman wails for a dollar from passersby. Her face is twisted with anguish, her sweatpants bloody from the knee down. In the doorway of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, a couple lies in a huge pile of cardboard, blankets and suitcases. The two look sick and both have a gravelly cough. The office is closed. A small crowd is gathered, watching them.

The United We Can bottle return depot is the most popular business in the area, with a lineup that reaches down the block. This is where the city’s binners — the people who fill bags and shopping carts with returnable empties — come to get paid. A makeshift flea market springs up here in the afternoons. People are selling what they have from little squares of fabric. One man offers a snow-globe, a video game controller, a hacky sack and a novelty rubber hand. Another has channel changers, four of them, and plastic toys still wrapped in plastic.

The crowd is well-behaved, but the police swoop in about every half hour or so. On their third visit, one officer has a lengthy argument with one man and then another is arrested. The man is cuffed while five officers mill around. The crowd takes little notice.

The alley behind United We Can is humming with activity. As I enter the alley, a city worker with a wheeled trash bin passes by a large malodorous pile of garbage. Even though it is near freezing, the stench is powerful. A woman looks up at me as she inserts a needle into her ankle. Two men pass by with plates heaped high with potato salad, bread and lasagna. Pieces of bread are dropped everywhere, as are discarded socks and men’s underwear.

Midway up the alley, a cube van unloads a dozen kegs of beer behind the Dodson Hotel and just beyond it are about a dozen people smoking crack. A police car pulls into the mouth of the alley, but nobody moves. The police car backs up and moves on. More crack is smoked.

Society and poor family upbringing has created this out of control issue. No one knows how to deal with this because it is huge in numbers. Vancouver is an urban center but the DTES has never looked so bad… There will NEVER be an easy answer. Feeding and sheltering these people is the first step. Giving them some dignity and pride. But the main thing is the rehab & the counselling. These people must meet the outreach workers half way. There is so much dysfunction in the DTES. These people will end up in jail or die on the street. It’s a sad situation for all to see! Positive outlook is needed in a major way…

This has been an eyesore for years. A headache for emergency services as well. No one knows what exactly to do with these people if they are unwilling to go to rehab. Another way of looking at it is this… Try to reach out to those who want the help. Second, use resources in schools to PREVENT this from happening to future generations. These are somebody’s ADULT children now on the street. How did this all start to begin with??? Drugs and alcohol are never the answer! Life coping skills are important to lead your life in a normal way. Good luck with this neighborhood! You can do it!

I have seen this area of town and it is depressing. However, there have been groups of people & agencies that have tried to fix this issue. This is something that started decades ago and it will take a long time to fix, if ever… I know that it’s a poverty stricken neighborhood but we all need some hope & faith. You can never save them all. It’s the way it is in the DTES.

Thank you Randy, for being our eyes down there. We need to see this, but not many are brave enough to go for a walk in the alleyways of the DTES. Well written objective account of daily life in the bowels of our city.

Put these people in a hospital too clean them up, if they are mentally unable to look after themselves then, keep them somewhere away from this death spiral….. The societies that enable this to continue have proven themselves to be useless… Take every penny wasted on the enabling societies, and use the money to clean these poor people up and help them, this is sick, and is NOT getting better, ill bet its getting much worse.

i believe you have eloquently described the downtown east side, i wonder why the province has not made attempts to clean it up down there. The officers working there must have have incredible will power to work there and see that carnage every day.. i would not want there job for a million dollars.